Is there a way to group values in a column between data gaps in R? - r

Question

I want to group my data in different chunks when the data is continuous. Trying to get the group column from dummy data like this:
a b group
<dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 1 1 1
2 2 2 1
3 3 3 1
4 4 NA NA
5 5 NA NA
6 6 NA NA
7 7 12 2
8 8 15 2
9 9 NA NA
10 10 25 3
I tried using
test %>% mutate(test = complete.cases(.)) %>%
group_by(group = cumsum(test == TRUE)) %>%
select(group, everything())
But it doesn't work as expected:
group a b test
<int> <dbl> <dbl> <lgl>
1 1 1 1 TRUE
2 2 2 2 TRUE
3 3 3 3 TRUE
4 3 4 NA FALSE
5 3 5 NA FALSE
6 3 6 NA FALSE
7 4 7 12 TRUE
8 5 8 15 TRUE
9 5 9 NA FALSE
10 6 10 25 TRUE
Any advice?

Answer 1

Using rle in base R -
transform(df, group1 = with(rle(!is.na(b)), rep(cumsum(values), lengths))) |>
transform(group1 = replace(group1, is.na(b), NA))
# a b group group1
#1 1 1 1 1
#2 2 2 1 1
#3 3 3 1 1
#4 4 NA NA NA
#5 5 NA NA NA
#6 6 NA NA NA
#7 7 12 2 2
#8 8 15 2 2
#9 9 NA NA NA
#10 10 25 3 3

Answer 2

A couple of approaches to consider if you wish to use dplyr for this.
First, you could look at transition from non-complete cases (using lag) to complete cases.
library(dplyr)
test %>%
mutate(test = complete.cases(.)) %>%
group_by(group = cumsum(test & !lag(test, default = F))) %>%
mutate(group = replace(group, !test, NA))
Alternatively, you could add row numbers to your data.frame. Then, you could filter to include only complete cases, and group_by enumerating with cumsum based on gaps in row numbers. Then, join back to original data.
test$rn <- seq.int(nrow(test))
test %>%
filter(complete.cases(.)) %>%
group_by(group = c(0, cumsum(diff(rn) > 1)) + 1) %>%
right_join(test) %>%
arrange(rn) %>%
dplyr::select(-rn)
Output
a b group
<int> <int> <dbl>
1 1 1 1
2 2 2 1
3 3 3 1
4 4 NA NA
5 5 NA NA
6 6 NA NA
7 7 12 2
8 8 15 2
9 9 NA NA
10 10 25 3

Answer 3

Using data.table, get rleid then remove group IDs for NAs, then fix the sequence with factor to integer conversion:
library(data.table)
setDT(test)[, group1 := {
x <- complete.cases(test)
grp <- rleid(x)
grp[ !x ] <- NA
as.integer(factor(grp))
}]
# a b group group1
# 1: 1 1 1 1
# 2: 2 2 1 1
# 3: 3 3 1 1
# 4: 4 NA NA NA
# 5: 5 NA NA NA
# 6: 6 NA NA NA
# 7: 7 12 2 2
# 8: 8 15 2 2
# 9: 9 NA NA NA
# 10: 10 25 3 3